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StartEngine ICO 2.0 Summit Focuses on Companies' Path to Liquidity

Equities.com had feet on the street and eyes in the crowd last week at StartEngine's second "ICO 2.0" Summit in Santa Monica, California. As a follow-up to its inaugural ICO 2.0 conference last November, this second iteration attracted over 1,000 attendees across the spectrum of constituents -- investors, companies and facilitators -- who make up the new entrepreneurial ecosystem that has embraced tokenization as a viable means of raising capital.

StartEngine is an electronic platform that has already helped 150 companies raise capital, according to CEO Howard Marks, with another 300 to 500 deals anticipated in 2018. The platform launched in 2015, with the advent of the changes to the Regulation A exemption, as StartEngine hosted Elio Motors' $17 million offering. In addition to Regulation A deals, StartEngine currently facilitates Regulation D and Crowdfunded offerings.

Source: StartEngine

We think the most informative panel of the day was "Path to Liquidity," which served as a proxy for the entire summit's thematic focus. The video below captures the whole day and is pegged to start at the beginning of the Path to Liquidity panel. It's a 30-minute segment that we recommend highly to all investors and companies who are contemplating an offering and how secondary market liquidity may be achieved.

Source: StartEngine

The "Path to Liquidity" panel was moderated by Nathan Latka, host of "The Top" podcast, during which he interviews entrepreneurs about how they grow and run their businesses. The panelists and some of the highlights we noted included:

The regulators are very concerned that broker-dealers have adequate net capital to protect customer assets. Also focused on clearance and settlement of transactions.

There are so many pitfalls, so many rules. Without being self-serving, you really need a good lawyer to help you navigate these waters.

Even those jurisdictions such as Japan, where she had just spent a week, that may considered among the more liberal ones, are being very thoughtful about regulations, centered on anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) rules.

Bottom line: If you are offering tokens so that you can raise money for your business, then you're selling securities.

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